Hand-held electronic gaming devices are known which utilize input keys for entering input into the game in response to material read from a booklet--see U.S. Pat. No. 4,164,078 to Goldfarb one of the Applicants and U.S. Pat. No. 4,303,398 to Yoseloff. Applicants' wherein also developed a hand-held electronic game which is a predecessor to the game which is the subject of the present application and which utilizes a keyboard for entering input information based on questions provided in a game book.
In hand-held electronic games, compactness of design is typically an important consideration as the more bulky the game, the more difficult it can be to handle and play. This is particularly true where separate sheets of text or game books are also provided for use with the hand-held game. Applicants' prior game, includes a hinged cover for closing over the keypad when the game is not in use with the closed game book contained within the cover. When the game is to be used, the hinged cover is pivoted open and the game book is removed from the hinged cover and opened for being read by a player. The use of the hinged cover makes the above game device less compact than is desirable when the cover is pivoted open for playing of the game. In addition, having to take out and separate the game book from the game for playing of the game is undesirable in that the potential for losing the book is increased. Accordingly, there is a need for a hand-held electronic game utilizing a game book which has a compact, ergonomic design for ease in playing and avoids the potential problem of losing game books associated with the electronic game.
To play Applicants' prior game, the sheets of the game book included number coded questions with multiple letter coded answers, i.e., multiple-choice questions with associated answer choices, with the player entering the number code of the question and then choosing the letter code of the answer they feel correctly responds to the selected question. To go to another question after answering of a selected question, the player has to push a CLEAR key and then select and enter the code of another question. Typically, the question books contain hundreds of such questions so that entering their number codes requires punching multiple keys, in addition to the CLEAR key before entering the question number and the ENTER key after. The procedure of having to press a CLEAR button and then punch in the number code on the keys for each question, and then press the ENTER key, can become quite tedious and burdensome, particularly if the player is going through a substantial number of questions in the book. Accordingly, there is a need for a game which does not require the user to each time a question is being selected to press in the code for that question.